


Thanatopsis

by vinnie2757



Series: Superbia Drabbles [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/M, Gen, M/M, Teenagers, dirk does the canon thing and dies, its starhost's au but she lets me write things, like the loser he is, superbia au, teenage superheroes being teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 21:05:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are Dirk Strider and you are willing to die a thousand times to save those you love.</p><p>You are Jane Crocker and you can never die.</p><p>[Superbia drabbles ported from tumblr]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Impending Failure

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Liquefaction](https://archiveofourown.org/works/763565) by [StarHost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarHost/pseuds/StarHost). 



> StarHost is a great big bully and I wrote things for her. These are some of those things.
> 
> Title from the poem of the same name by William Cullen Bryant.
> 
> The AU is Superbia, a superpower AU, and you can find out about powers and the school over at http://superbiastuck.tumblr.com

You are Dirk Strider and you are pitching a fit. The workshop is not your individual space, but you have your own station to work at, all your projects cluttering every available surface. They get thrown to the floor, against the wall, smashing back into their cogs and screws and tiny plates that took three weeks of filing to be the exact shape you needed. Your toolkit is upended, screwdrivers and wrenches and rat-tails getting scattered across the floor and forming a death trap for anyone not thinking as they come in. You even try upending the desk, but though you have the honed strength of a swordsman, so much upper-body strength you could probably arm-wrestle Equius and put up a fight, it’s too heavy for you and all it does is strain your shoulders.

So you kick at it instead until you’ve knocked one of the legs out and sent it crashing to the floor.

Standing in the middle of the carnage, panting and snarling like an animal, you clench your fists and screw your eyes shut. Your face is cut, blood welling in the cage formed by the hair of your eyebrow, and your hands are shredded, blood dripping to the floor with the way your nails dig into the cuts on your palms.

The door to the workshop swings open, but you refuse to look.

‘Strider.’

You breathe through your nose, bite back curses and _fuck off, Eq_ , and the door swings shut again. For a few moments, you stand there, and then you kick the other leg of your station out and the whole thing collapses.

When the last of the anger is gone, drained from you in your blood and sweat, you collapse to the floor, sitting on the tiles and shoving the balls of your hands into your eyes.

Seb beeps and boops from across the room, whining as your abuse of the machine forces it to power down, but you ignore the rabbit, snarl at yourself and crawl across the floor to forcibly shut it up by smashing it into the floor until it stops.

It will take a solid week to repair, but right now you can’t bring yourself to care.

The door opens again, and you don’t realise that you are in a heap on the floor, and must have been for a while; the blood in your eyebrow is dry, and your knuckles are black for the blood and grease there.

‘Come with me.’

‘Fuck you.’

Silence, and then Equius is picking his way across the obstacle course to lift you to your feet by his shirt. You ignore him, limp in Equius’ grip and don’t respond to anything he says.

In the end, Equius is hefting you over his shoulders, carrying you fireman style through the corridors and making sure, you know, still limp and bloody and not responding, through the most busy ones. You thinks you hear Karkat mouthing off, but you ignore it.

Equius says nothing to any inquiries, and takes you through to the infirmary, dumping you rather unceremoniously on the floor. Literally, too, since you land in a heap on the vinyl.

‘Equius,’ Jane rasps, ‘be nice.’

But she doesn’t sound like she wants to be nice herself, so you don’t bother getting up.

The other mechanic disappears then, clomping off back to wherever he’d come from, leaving Jane in her hospital bed, and you in a sweaty, greasy, bloodied heap on the floor next to her.

There are several minutes of silence, and you stay where you are, face pressed to the floor. It’s where it belongs.

‘Equius said you tore the workshop apart,’ she says eventually, and you grunt.

‘Just my side,’ you mumble.

‘Just your side.’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay.’

You manage to shove yourself up, and sit at the side of her bed without looking at her.

‘Would you care to explain?’ she asks, and you pick at the dried blood on your hands.

‘Not really.’

‘You know I’m going to make you, so I don’t know why you’re fighting it.’

‘I could just leave.’

‘You’ve avoided me for three weeks, Dee, you won’t leave now you’re here. I know you, better than you think I do.’

 You say nothing, lip curling, and you can almost imagine the smile on her face. Roxy said there would be scars. You’ll miss that smile.

‘Promise me one thing,’ she asks then, and hisses as she reaches out to take one of your grimy hands.

‘Anything,’ you whisper, and push her hand back to the bed, laces your fingers together.

‘Promise me you don’t blame yourself for what happened.’

‘I can’t do that.’

Her nails dig into your palm, into the scratches. ‘Dee.’

‘Anything else,’ you beg, and look at her finally. ‘Anything else, and it’s yours. But not that. I’m sorry, but not that.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she tells you, and her eyes are so bruised, butterfly tape holding her face together.

‘Yes, it was,’ you whisper. ‘It didn’t work, I didn’t make it in time.’

She smiles, crooked and with wire in her jaw.

‘Dee,’ she says, and you frown at her. ‘Dee, that wasn’t your fault. These things take time, you can’t just – it’s not – Dee, you were already stretched too far, you can’t expect it to work like that!’

‘It should have,’ you snap, and wrench yourself away to pace. Your hands smear grease and blood through your hair as you tug and yank at it, and she stays in the bed watching you. ‘However thin I’m stretched, it shouldn’t _matter_! I should have been able to get to you through Seb, I should have – I could – I’m supposed to keep you safe!’

‘You kept me alive,’ she says, and she looks so _sad_ , and it breaks your heart. ‘That’s more than anyone else could have done in your position.’

‘It wasn’t enough.’

‘Dirk,’ she says, and you stop pacing to look back at her. ‘Dirk, listen to me. This was _not_ your fault, and it will never be your fault. Just because you want to be – to be – some kind of _hero_ – it doesn’t mean that you can kill yourself permanently trying to save us all the time! We’re _kids_ , not Gods!’

‘Well, we should be!’ you snarl, and she flinches. ‘I _will_ make it work,’ you promise, and she leans back as you move to stand beside her, to lean in and press your foreheads together. ‘We’re war vets, Janey. We’re the frontline in this war, and I’m going to make sure no enemy gets to you ever again. No one’s going to hurt you.’

She tries to draw back, but you’re holding her close, breathing in the sterile, antiseptic smell of her skin and dressings, the warm throb of her bruises and the sticky fat of the adhesive on the tape, the expensive shampoo in her hair.

‘Dee,’ she whispers, and you know what’s coming, dig your fingers in to hold her. ‘Dee, you’re hurting me.’

And just like that, you recoil, backing away to the end of the bed and staring at her like a wild animal.

‘Dee.’

But you’re gone, sweeping out of the room and returning to your lab. She will be out of the infirmary by the time you are done fixing Seb, and she will be off crutches by the time there is a crisis that you can slit your throat for. You still don’t make it to Seb, the rabbit rejecting your consciousness, and you come back to yourself in the bed she’d lain unconscious in for a month, throat raw from screaming, and you ignore orders to rest and try again. And again. And again.

You’re going to keep trying until you get it right.


	2. The Date

You’re choosing eyeshadow when he skulks in, hands in pockets and shoulders hunched, and you frown at him briefly before popping  the three pinks from one palette and replacing them with the two blues and the cream from another.

‘I thought you had practice?’ you ask him, because he’s perching on the edge of your bed like it hurts him to sit down and you don’t know how he got into the dormitory at all, let alone into your bedroom.

‘That dress makes your ass look huge,’ he tells you. ‘Just saying.’

‘I know,’ you reply, smoothing the fabric over your hip. ‘That’s the point.’

You thought the dress was cute; a nice cream T-shirt with a puffed blue floral skirt, and a wide belt about the waist. It’s not too much of a step away from your usual wear, but it’s been a while since you wore something that was fitted, never mind a dress this short.

‘A date?’ he asks, and you watch his eyes in the mirror as you lean closer to apply the mid-blue powder. When you hum, he adds, ‘you’re wearing heels. You never wear heels.’

‘Yeah,’ you hum, because you have nothing else to say. ‘A date.’

His eyes aren’t as well hidden as he likes to think they are, and you watch them climb your legs and back, avoiding yours before meeting them through what he pretends is the protection of his shades. Honestly, they do little; he’s so easy to read.

‘Dee,’ you say, and sigh.

He says nothing, turns his gaze to his hands, fiddles with his fingers. He’s wearing the collar of his shirt popped again, and as much as you want to go and turn that god-awful thing down, you don’t.

‘Do I look alright?’ you ask instead, and straighten. Only one eye is made up, but he knows you’re not going out like that. ‘Is it too showy? I can change, I mean – I don’t want to look _desperate_.’

‘You look fine,’ he assures you, and the smile he gives you barely makes those dimples of his show, let alone reach his eyes. ‘Beautiful.’

‘Good.’

‘Not that he’ll notice either way, he’s not the most intelligent person in the world.’

You scowl into the mirror, mouth a tight line, and you focus on fading out the darker blue at the outer V of your eye. You don’t know why you’re bothering, your glasses will disguise everything anyway, but you want to _feel_ pretty. Maybe you can fool yourself into believing it. Dirk Strider is a biased man, and though he promises that he doesn’t lie, he’s obligated to find you beautiful. You’ve been friends for so long that he’s become blind to all your faults.

If you were dating, you might find it sweet. Right now you don’t care.

‘Dee.’

‘I’m just saying; he’s been fucking you around for _years_ , he wouldn’t notice if you showed up in lingerie.’

‘I’m sure he would.’

‘The year I dated him, he never once noticed the scars on my neck.’

You stay silent, applying a touch of eyeliner to your waterline. _You’ve_ noticed the scars; a blind man would notice them. It’s the reason he pops his collar, because though they eventually fade as the timeline straightens itself out, and though once it’s restored itself, time makes it look like he’s been wearing something too tight, a pink band about his throat, but – the year they’d been dating – that had been a bad year.

‘Do you see?’ he asks, and flops back to stare at the ceiling. You think he’s staring, it’s hard to tell. ‘I don’t want you to fall into the same trap.’

‘I won’t,’ you assure him, flick mascara over your lashes, and cross to lean over him, hands behind your back. ‘I can’t die, remember?’

‘That isn’t what I meant and you know it.’

You grin down at him, and your fingers inch under his shirt, splay across his ribs, and he draws a breath, jaw tightening.

‘Don’t you dare,’ he hisses, but you’ve got him pinned, and you only let him go when he’s too out of breath to even squeal.

As he gasps and kicks ineffectually at you, the only one he never, _ever_ seeks to hurt, you yank on his collar.

‘For Pete’s sake,’ you huff, and slap his heaving chest, going back to your mirror to apply lipgloss. This is more make-up than you’ve worn in months, and you had to watch so many tutorials to know what you were doing. ‘What did you do this time?’

He rolls over, face buried in your coverlet, and ignores you. He’s still breathing, at least, so you elect to ignore him.

‘Don’t think you’re staying there all night.’

His reply is muffled by the sheets, but you _know_ he’s told you he is.

‘I’m locking my door,’ you tell him, ‘you won’t be able to get out.’

He shrugs.

‘If I come back and find you asleep in my bed,’ you start, and he lifts his head to laugh.

‘You’ll just climb in next to me,’ he says, rolling over to look at you with a real smile this time. ‘We’ve shared a bed before, Janey, it doesn’t bother me.’

You frown at him in the mirror, and he purses his lips back, eyebrows disappearing beneath the arch of his shades as he over-frowns back at you.

‘Well,’ you say, and you have to think about it. ‘What if it bothers _me_? What if I want to bring Jake back?’

‘I’ll disown you,’ he says, and his shirt rides as he slips off the bed and back to his feet. You remember when you could do that. ‘Simple as.’

You raise an eyebrow at that, and he snorts, finds your powder brush (Roxy’s, actually, but you’ll never admit it) and the paler blush, and carefully sweeps it over your cheeks, making you blush for real, ears darker than the powder.

‘Do you have to?’

‘It works now,’ he tells you, and shoves his hands back in his pockets, shoulders by his ears. ‘Wasn’t complete.’

‘Um, okay. Are you going to head back to your dorm?’

He hesitates for a second, and for once, you can’t read his face.

‘No,’ he says, and a far-too-fake grin lights up his face as he extends his arm. ‘Every heiress needs a chaperone, doesn’t she?’

‘You are not walking me to a date with your ex, oh my God.’

‘Sure I am. Gotta make sure he treats my favourite girl right, don’t I? Can’t have him treating you as badly as he treated me.’

You want to say something about that, about how Dirk had done everything and that had been too much, and they’d been younger then, foolish, but you don’t. You can’t, it isn’t your place. As you take his arm, fingers hooked into the warm, dry crease of his elbow, tight with muscle and a familiar comfort, you think that Dirk’s grown up a lot since then, that he’s matured into someone _he_ can be proud of. You’ve all grown up, but you hope it’s enough.

It isn’t, of course.

The closer you get to the meeting place, because of course Jake doesn’t think about coming to collect his date, the tighter Dirk seems to become, the harder you have to squeeze to keep you bother walking forwards. You are better than this, you want to say.

‘Oh,’ he says, when he sees your chaperone. ‘Hello.’

Dirk grunts. You want to tell him that he isn’t a pig, don’t behave like one.

‘Um. Long time, no see.’

You dig your nails into his elbow, scratching through the hair. _Don’t_ , you beg. _Don’t make this awkward_.

‘Sure,’ Dirk says, shrugging with his free shoulder. ‘Been a while.’

This is not how you envisioned this date going. If this doesn’t get better, you aren’t going to get another date. God knew Dirk could go on the defensive, but this is an outright territory battle, and you aren’t stupid enough to open your mouth.

Where’s Roxy when you need her? Drunken mediation was better than no mediation.

‘You’re being a little funny, pal,’ Jake says, and you gnaw on the inside of your lip.

This was such a bad idea, why didn’t you say no? You could have said no, you could be in your pyjamas watching loud action movies with John. That would be better than this.

‘Am I? Oh, I _am_ sorry. Excuse me for wanting to make sure my best friend is happy.’

‘Are you still sore about us?’ Jake asks, and you have to duck your head.

Jake has never been _tactful_ , but you haven’t seen your boys interacting since they split up. You wonder if they’ve even seen each other since the break-up, and think probably not. There is so much _venom_ , and you wince when Dirk replies.

‘No, of course not,’ he spits from over your shoulder. ‘I really enjoyed decapitating myself on our first date to save your ass!’

You knew it had happened, hell, everyone had known. Your class had seen his body, and then he’d scared you all by reappearing at your shoulder, and did he _have_ to do that? Every time he went back to change things, he reappeared, and you hate him so much sometimes. He does it deliberately, you know. He thinks he’s so _clever_.

‘Oh, you know what!’ you snap, yanking your hand free of his arm, and immediately you miss the warmth of his skin, and the night is chillier than you thought it was, cold air curling across your legs and arms and you wish you thought to bring a coat. ‘Forget it! Forget the whole thing! I don’t care!’

And you, Jane Crocker, stomp off back towards the dormitories, trying so, so desperately not to cry or trip over your own feet, but you fail at both. At least this way you can pretend you’re crying about a scraped knee.

Roxy, when she finds you scrubbing make-up off your face an hour later, is not impressed with the boys, and promises to go punch them in the mouth. It makes you laugh, but you tell her not to.

In the morning, Dirk comes to apologise, and against your better judgement, you lift the corner of your sheets so he can climb in next to you and let you drool on his chest when you go back to sleep.


	3. Cessation

You find him slumped against a tree on the edge of the orchard. At first, you think nothing of it, too caught up in your thoughts as you are, too busy trying to squash frustration and anger and jealousy beneath a hundred different locks and layers and icing-thick fantasies. If you are honest, gaze on your shaking fingers as it is, you only really see him from the corner of your eye, and you just – you suppose you count him as part of the scenery.

As you walk past, his body slumps further, falls to the side. A horror movie cliché, you think, and pause, turn a little to look, thinking he’d fallen asleep, that you needed to wake him so he could get in out of the cold.

You don’t remember screaming, and you don’t remember him grabbing hold of you, you don’t remember clawing at him, nails short, but bitten down and ragged with tears, and you don’t remember him half-dragging, half-carrying you away.

He holds you tight as you quake and tremble and wail into his chest, chin atop your head and his collar soaked with tears and snot and mascara. Every time you try to fight your way out of his lean boy grip, he holds you tighter still, tangles your fingers, eventually holds you pinned to the bed with one knee and his forehead pressed to yours. He holds you until you fall asleep in the salt and rust smell of his embrace.

You wake alone, disorientated. For a few moments, you lie there, breathing in the smell of his sheets, machine oil and sweat and orange, and as you blink at the ceiling, you realise that he’s probably had sex in this bed. It bothers you, makes your skin crawl, knowing exactly who he’s had sex _with_ , but you cannot bring yourself to move.

You find that you are breathing hard, throat tight with – with – tears. You’re about to cry, but you refuse to. You force yourself to swallow the bitterness sticking like barbs in your throat.

It is not the first time he has died, and you have seen his body before, but you have never seen it so, so _botched_. He has always been impossibly _tidy_ about these things, about killing himself neatly. You touch your throat, feel the jump of your pulse beneath the warm pads of your baker’s fingers, draw a jagged line with the curve of your nail. You shiver, and roll onto your side, bury your head in your arms.

You are still lying there when he comes back.

‘Janey?’

The sound you make could be on a guessing game for animal noises under the caption ‘dying whale’. He says nothing; you aren’t even sure he’s breathing. A rustle of cloth, the creak of a spring, and then his body fits around yours, warm and damp and smelling fresh, smelling clean and open and honest. You flinch, curl tighter into yourself, and he touches your shoulder, fingertips, palm, hand sliding down your arm to cup your hand, calluses to chapped knuckles, bone to flesh, and his face rests in the tiny little space you have left between jaw and shoulder. He breathes against your neck, as warm and damp as the rest of him.

You think you feel him kiss your skin, but you are already heaving.

When you are done, kneeling beside the toilet, cheek pressed against the seat with his fingers combing through your hair, you turn your gaze to him. He’d gotten dressed in the interim, no longer in his underwear, and you could almost bring yourself to miss the flex of muscle as he moved and breathed and _existed_ , but honestly, you just feel tired. It is so tiring, caring about this stupid, _stupid_ boy.

‘You were dead,’ you croak, and he winces, collar popped and shades shoved high against his brow. ‘You were dead in the orchard. I saw you. I stepped in the blood. It was – it was everywhere, Dee, it was everywhere, and I saw it and I saw you, and you were – you – Dee, why?’

But you know why.

 You can almost hear the flutter of his eyelashes as he blinks, it’s so quiet. He stands there, leaning against the sink, arms folded tight across his chest and chin down, and he doesn’t look at you. He thinks you don’t know him, don’t understand, but he is an open book to you, and you know that he hasn’t raised his eyes since you spoke, staring at the orange toes of his trainers.

‘Dee,’ you beg, and his jaw tics, throat jumping as he swallows.

The door to his room bursts open, and the silence is destroyed.

‘Dirk! Dirk? Ah, there you are, I was wondering where you’d gotten to, did you forget our – oh, Jane! Hullo there! You don’t look so good; do you need to go to the nurse’s office?’

You barely manage it, but you turn your head, face the wall instead. It’s safer. Your face must be a mess right now, sweaty and streaked as it is. How unsightly.

Jake lingers for a moment, in a limbo of social niceties already expended and no common ground to create a conversation from. Part of you, a nasty part that you thought you’d long since stamped out, you hope that he feels like the third wheel now, that he feels unwelcome in a room that is technically his own. His bed is here, after all. Two to a room, and all.

‘Jake.’

And oh, you wonder how many people have fallen for that voice, so silken and dark, still with that edge, the dehydrated gravel of too many hours in a too-dry room. A melt-in-the-middle dark chocolate pudding, you’d thought once, all those years ago, when your girlish notions of romance had faded enough that you realise just how easily he’d manipulated you into doing what he wanted, made you swoon by turning up the charm.

(Once, you’d asked Jade if Dave could do it, and she laughed, waved a hand. She’d told you that he tried it all the time, but Dave’s idea of making her swoon was laughable at the politest. She, however, she’d told you with no small amount of pride, could make him swoon at the drop of a hat.)

You do not look, do not want to see them. You imagine all the same, gentle fingers on the stubble-etched jaw, warm eyes of molten gold and the cat-curve of a smile designed to break the kneecaps of whoever saw it. A sixteen-year-old boy should not be so good at destroying anyone’s backbone, but he aged fast, and he grew into his body even faster.

Jake is probably quivering right now, but you cannot hear him breathing. You can imagine his staccato breaths, little and fast in his chest, lips parted and eyes so wide. But there is only silence beneath the beat of your pulse in your ears.

You won’t ever admit it, but you are jealous. So incredibly jealous; you know that Dirk died for his boyfriend, because that’s all he ever dies for. He will never die for you, though he says he will, though he promises that your body will not have hit the floor before he is saving you, but you know lies for what they are.

You cannot die, and so there will never be a need for him to die for you.

The door shuts, and the silence breaks.

Dirk’s fingers return to your hair; you flinch away.

‘I,’ you gasp, ‘I should go. You’ve got – stuff – to do. And I – I have – um. I have class.’

‘Janey.’

It sears your skin where he touches you, and you rip yourself free.

‘You were dead,’ you tell him. ‘I saw you. And you can – you can pretend like you didn’t die, that I didn’t see you lying there, didn’t see you with your throat cut open like some kind of hacked up chunk of meat, but I did, Dirk. _I saw you_.’

He looks at you, and he is so tall, over a head above you, and it cranes your neck. Here you are looking into the sun, and it turns his hair to the colour of diamond, shining so bright you might think you were the Virgin and he Gabriel.

But he has no message of divine purpose for you, and the only thing he brings with him is death.

‘Jane.’

For the first time in your life, you slap him, and his hand falls back to his side. His cheek blooms, a rose amongst a bed of thorns, and you turn on your heel.

Your feet feel heavy with the blood stuck to your soles as you leave.

\-----

Later, after you have avoided him for weeks, and Roxy has refused him entry to your shared room so many times that you are scared to sleep in it for fear he might just climb through the window whilst you sleep, he finally catches you.

There is no way for you to avoid him, and you know that no matter how far you walk to escape him, he won’t let it go this time.

‘I’m sorry that you had to see it,’ he says, and you nod, eyebrows raising a little, lips pursing. Uninterested. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Okay,’ you say.

‘Okay?’

‘Yeah. Okay. What do you want me to say, Dirk?’

He licks his lips, and you sigh, move to walk past him. The corridor is wide enough for four to walk arm-in-arm, but somehow you cannot pass him.

‘Janey, I.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ you ask, and the expression on his face just about breaks your heart.

It’s barely an expression, just a tiny little wobble of his lip, a tightening in his jaw that those who didn’t look would not see. But it is there, and you wonder, if your places were exchanged. Would you cry?

‘Dirk, I can’t,’ you tell him, and your voice snags. ‘I just can’t, okay? Not now.’

You do not speak again until the day he dumps Jake. 


End file.
